


Different People in the Dark

by mackenziebutterschnapps (hannibalsbattlebot)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Minor Violence, Post-Season/Series 03 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 19:06:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4798943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannibalsbattlebot/pseuds/mackenziebutterschnapps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal and Will adjust to being together in the first few days following their escape. Its difficult, to say the least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Different People in the Dark

They had to go. Neither of them questioned that one base fact. They didn't talk about why, they just went.

He needed time and standing still would give them no time. Things would happen fast and the decision-making power would be snatched out of his hands. Their flight gave him time to think. That's all it was.

For the first few days, the interior of the car was humid and briny, even after they had changed and showered. They drove constantly, through the night, one sleeping while the other drove bleary eyed. They did not talk.

He was angry that he was alive and still had to push on, making decisions. Fighting.

 

When they had to stop for food or fuel, Will sat in the car. His face, with its angry red gash, would have grabbed attention even if it wasn't all over the news. He and Hannibal started out as "Missing," but it only took a few days to be "Missing and Assumed Dead."

"They are trying to quell public panic," Hannibal said with a smile. It wasn't Will Graham at large that people were afraid of, although they should be. "The public has been soothed like an infant with Uncle Jack's bedtime stories."

Will rubbed his eyes. They burned. "Maybe we can finally stop and get a good night's sleep."

They found a middle of the road hotel. The kind of place with a pool and a lot of vacationing families. "They'll either be looking for us at the high end or the low end," Hannibal said. For a moment, Will thought he meant at the bottom of the pool, not their choice of hotel.

Hannibal sat back in the driver's seat, handed Will a key card and showed his own. "327 and 329."

Will took the key card for 329 and threw it out the passenger side window.

"If I leave you alone overnight, I'd wake up in the morning and find you long gone and myself arrested for the murder of you, Francis Dolarhyde, several FBI agents and probably the guy working the front desk. If you think I'm going to let you out of my sight, you're crazy." 

 

They stood in the doorway, looking at the one bed in the room.

"This is what they had," Hannibal said. "I wasn't expecting company. I thought I was giving you a respite from my constant presence, which seems to chafe you."

 "I'm exhausted," Will said.  

He sat in the room's only chair as Hannibal cleaned up and got himself ready for bed. He was only peripherally aware of Hannibal moving around in the room, but the chair was between him and the door. He wasn't going anywhere without a fight. Will wasn't fully present in the room, but he wasn't anywhere else. His familiar mental haunts held no solace for him. Rushing water didn't bring him peace, and any building he walked into held the vibrations of another presence there. He couldn't bar any doors against Hannibal, not even in his own mind. So he stared at the blank wall, trying to make his thoughts just as blank.

He considered sleeping in the chair, but the thought of waking up achy after spending another night in the same clothes with the same filth clinging to his skin was enough to make him move when it was his turn in the bathroom. He took the car keys with him. Hannibal looked at him, the picture of innocence, as if he didn't even know why Will would want to keep the car keys with him. Then a smile pulled up one corner of his mouth. _If I really wanted to go anywhere, that wouldn't stop me._

The bathroom was steamy. Hannibal's underwear rinsed out in the sink was hanging over the towel rack. It was quaint and domestic, while at the same time unabashedly intimate. For some reason, it made Will want to burst out in tears. He was so tired, but he lingered in the shower, enjoying feeling clean although the fixtures were streaked with rust and chalky stains. When Will came out, Hannibal was already asleep, turned away from the bathroom door. Asleep or pretending to be, sparing him the awkward pillow talk.

In the middle of the night they gravitated together, crossing the no-man's land in the middle of the mattress.

Will was lulled by the warm water, the warm bed, the warm body, the relief of that last little knot of resistance finally being untangled.

So he didn't mind his bedmate nuzzling into the nape of his neck, or lips grazing his unwounded cheek. He felt hot breath on his face that would have sent him into a panic mere days ago.

 

In the morning Hannibal saw fresh jewels of blood beading on the wound on Will's face. He reached to touch it and Will slapped his hand away, his eyes wide with outrage.

 

"I wish I had my boat," Will said.

It was the first thing either of them had said all morning.

Hannibal looked over at him, and then away.

"I would feel safer if we were on my boat." Will looked out the window. "I'll probably never get to sail it again."

"Your wife will probably get it in the divorce."

"Don't," he said. "You do not. Get to talk to me. About my marriage."

They were so good at provoking each other. It was a reflex. Everything else came so slowly.

 

In the darkest hours of night was the only time they could meet each other. While in the daylight, a small movement on Hannibal's hand towards Will would make him flinch, in the night he could rest his head on Will's chest, his arm around him. Hannibal fell asleep with his hand on the scar he could feel but not see.

Will slipped out from under him. He stirred only briefly. In the yellow light of the bathroom he looked at the smile Hannibal had carved into him. Will felt a fresh anger at Hannibal that he put his hand over it, claiming it in pride. He could cry and say it hurt him just as much, but Will was the one who had his body sewn back together. The wound belongs to the wounded, not the one who inflicted the wound.

_He gave it to me, so its mine._

Hannibal was woken by the sense that someone was closing in on him. He had a split second of disorientation before he remembered. It was dark, but scent told him there was no one else in the room, just him and Will. Light wouldn't have helped anyway. He was face down on the pillow...and being held there.

The light snapped on and Hannibal felt the tight grip on his neck and the knee in his back. "I wanted to get a good look at you, flat on your face, for once. Prone and at someone else's mercy. It's not a position you get in very often."

"You're right," Hannibal gasped. "But now I've fallen on my face. I crawl on my belly and eat the dust of the earth. "

Will ground his knee in harder, twisted Hannibal's arm behind his back. He had taken the comment as sarcasm.

"Yes," Hannibal gasped.

"What?"

"Yes to it all." It was a strain to lift his head up enough to be heard. "Do whatever you want to me. I won't fight you. You know I could, but I won't."

"Are consenting to me breaking your arm?"

"I trust you."

"No," he said, wrenching Hannibal's arm just a little higher. "Don't trust me. I don't want to be the sort of person that you would trust."

Hannibal freed his other arm from under the weight of his body and it shot out, but not at Will. He knocked the lamp off the table. It didn't break, but the bulb went out and the room was in darkness again.

It was several long moments, both of them breathing heavy until Will started to release the grip on Hannibal's arm. Hannibal didn't dare turn over, but stayed face down and waited.

Will's rage needed resistance, like a wave slamming against a seawall. When the resistance was removed it flowed out until it was spent.

He melted, flattening himself on top of Hannibal. He found the hand that had knocked over the lamp and intertwined Hannibal's fingers with his. He nestled his head between his shoulder blades. The same weight was pinning Hannibal down, but felt so much lighter.

"No. No no no," Will moaned. There were so many strands of meaning in it. Hannibal could appreciate it like a piece of music. Melody of sorrow, harmony of longing, and the strong rhythm of Will's beating heart keeping time, fiercely refusing to stop.

It was painful to him that he couldn't embrace Will as well, but maybe that was for the best. Will had to come to him on his own terms. It was his struggle to move forward and Hannibal's struggle to hold back.

 

"We're dead," Hannibal said, showing him the newest edition of Tattlecrime.

Will let him go off to the store alone and didn't even think twice about it. It was Hannibal who wondered if Will would be there when he got back.

"It's about damn time," Will took the paper, and skimmed it. "They found our bodies and positively identified them through dental records. What a load of horse shit. A Freddie Lounds article that quotes Jack Crawford isn't worth the paper it's printed on." He threw the paper down in disgust. "What fluent liars the pursuers of truth and justice are."

"They can't tell the truth. Their incompetence has released a monster into society."

"This changes nothing, you know. They'll still be looking for us."

"It will give some people closure," Hannibal said, and then paused in that way that showed he was weighing the impact of his words. "Your wife is a widow now."

"Again."

"Our death is an important threshold. For other people and for us."

"Is it? An important threshold that we crossed?"

Hannibal had the good grace to look slightly ashamed of himself.

 

There was a strange buzzing noise coming from the bathroom. Hannibal was standing at the sink, using the mirror as a guide as he shaved his head with an electric razor. Will had to watch as shape of his skull was revealed.

"Cutting your hair for the dead? An ancient custom," Will said. "Not one I would think you would practice."

"I never have before. Never needed to. But who else would I mourn more deeply?"

"Than yourself?"

"Than you."

With his head shaved, Hannibal looked less severe, if anything. There was nothing to draw the attention away from his dark eyes. If he gave himself away anywhere, it was his eyes. Like right now, his lips were set in a neutral line without tension of any kind, but his eyes held a sparkle of joy throughout this grim funerary task.

Will sat down on the edge of the tub.

"Me next."

He swiveled his legs over the side so he sat facing in. Hannibal touched his neck first before the blade, so he wouldn't be surprised. Will watched the hair fall in drifts into the tub and into his lap. Tears slipped from his eyes before he realized they were gathering there. Hannibal's fingers touched the newly bared skin of Will's scalp, thumb in the notch where his skull met his spine.

_If he had something sharp, this would be the place to strike. An upward thrust in this gap would go right to my brainstem._

He shivered and he told himself it was the climate controlled cool air on his bare head.

Will remembered this as the summer haircut of childhood. A swipe of the shaver and he was left with a cool neck and brown fuzz that would grow over the school vacation. The rasp of stubble on his scalp reminded him of freedom and escape from authority. Summer, out from the watch of teachers and his father at work all day, was a chance for him to be on his own, roaming the town—whatever town he was in.

Hannibal sensed the tension in Will's neck easing, and took a risk, hugging him from behind in the harsh glare of the bathroom lights.

Will didn’t fight and, finally, leaned into him again.

"Now we'll be unrecognizable," Hannibal said.

"Except to each other."


End file.
